Copywriting
Digital Marketing
The Tribe
What we will cover
What is a landing page?
A landing page is a specially constructed webpage which visitors ‘land on’ after clicking a link from an ad or another external source. Landing pages are most commonly associated with pay-per-click (PPC) advertising where a destination page has to be specified during set-up.
Many companies choose their company home page but that may not be the best landing page. Why? If you are focusing a PPC campaign on a specific goal (e.g. a product sale or a service signup), you want the landing page to bring you closer to that goal. Your home page is likely to provide too many options which can lead to confusion and distraction.
Before we get started, in order to add your own landing pages (for free), you will need access to your WordPress dashboard and know how to create pages. Our WordPress specialists cover this and much more in our upcoming WordPress Training Course.
What is your landing page for?
The most effective landing pages have one clear objective. This is normally to convince a visitor to either click a button or link or to fill in their details on an online form.
This goal also needs to be measurable. You need to be able to view how many people visited your landing page and how many took the desired action. This will provide you with a conversion rate for that page.
If your landing page is part of a PPC campaign, the wording you use should be clearly relevant to the text on your ad. This will not only maximise your conversion rate, it will also improve your ad’s quality score which means you gain more impressions and pay less per click.
Creating a strong value proposition
Relevance on its own is not enough. Your visitor has to be convinced that obeying your CTA is the best course of action for them. For this, you need to create a strong value proposition.
First, you need to understand what your offer actually is. This means sitting down with the product manager and making sure you are aware of every feature and benefit of the product or service you are asking people to buy or subscribe to.
Next, write down every feature and benefit in a list and arrange them in priority order. When thinking how to write landing page copy you should highlight the most important benefits immediately by including them in headings, subheadings, bullet points and in the first few lines of your sentences. If you have already created a customer persona, you will have an advantage as you will know what motivates your customers and what might stop them from taking the action you expect.
The most important benefits of all should be rewarded by a prime place in your page title. Rather than being clever or arty, go for clear, specific wording (e.g. ‘Increase productivity by 40% with our free desk organiser’)
For products and services you are selling, include guarantees such as a no obligation trial or a money back promise if possible. Even better, give away something of high value as a reward for buying or signing up. You could offer access to a free course or send them a free promotional gift.
Make sure your landing page includes all the information a visitor could possibly need before making a decision. Don’t worry too much about how long your landing page is as long as it’s complete. Rather than making the visitor read or scroll to the end to act, consider including the CTA at various points along the text. You could vary the CTA format by using a combination of links, buttons and other elements.
Polishing to perfection
Before hitting the publish button, run through the entire landing page again and ask yourself the question: ‘Has this word earned its right to be on the page?’ If it hasn’t, be ruthless and remove it.
For example, instead of writing ‘Our software will increase the speed and productivity of your workflow’ write ‘Our software will increase your productivity.’
You should also take a step back from your monitor and assess the visual impact of your page. Have you created lots of white space with bullet points and line breaks? Even the smallest tweak can have a marked effect on conversion.
Finally, you must access the page via a mobile device to make sure everything looks just as good in that format.
The more time you spend refining the copy, the closer you will get to the perfect landing page.
Publishing and evaluating your landing page
Publishing a landing page is no different to publishing any other page on WordPress although you wouldn’t normally add a landing page to your main menu. If you have ticked the option to automatically add new pages to your menu, you may want to pop into your menu and delete your landing page from it.
If you haven’t already, make sure you set your website up on Google Analytics. You can then activate the Goals feature and start measuring conversions.
Testing, testing
Publishing your landing page is best thought of as the first step of a process of landing page optimisation (LPO). You can continually improve your page’s performance by using A/B or split testing. This can be managed using Google Optimise (via your Google Analytics account) or by using one of the many free or paid WordPress A/B testing plugins.
Split testing involves tweaking one element of your landing page to create a new version. The split testing software will then serve half of your visitors the new page and the other half your original ‘control’ page. You can then keep the one that performs best as your standard page and change something else for your next experiment.
This is a great way to make data-driven decisions if you or a team member are unsure about elements of your copy or design. So there’s the skinny on how to write landing page copy, we will leave you with just one more (optional) approach…
Bonus tip: creating a squeeze page
Another way to boost conversions with your landing page is to completely remove your main menu from that page. Anyone arriving on that page will then either have to click your CTA button/link or hit their browser’s back arrow.
This kind of page is termed a ‘squeeze page’ by internet marketers, it is somewhat death or glory (and potentially fringes on a dark pattern) as you are removing any option for the user, however it highlights how easily distracted we can be from the matter at hand to see that this method has results.
You will likely need some coding knowledge or to speak to your local Devon web designer to remove menus from specific WordPress pages and if all this sounds like hard work, maybe it’s time to engage with a local digital marketing agency.
Do you know anyone who may be interested in this project?
Click to share:
